Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Booking it

Felted needle holder

Yarn: Lion Wool (100% wool; worsted weight)
Colors: Scarlet, goldenrod, winter white, sage, and cadet blue
Needles: US 8s
Stitches: 40

Items of note from knitting this needle roll... This was the first time I purled stitches and bound off. The pattern calls for binding off 17 stitches and knitting the next 23 and then binding off 17 more stitches and knitting the remaining six. I knitted and bound off for the first seventeen and purled and bound off for the next seventeen (and purled the six stitches left). It probably didn't make any difference since it was felted, but I was interested to see that the pre-felting, bound off edge looked consistent across the right side.

I also sewed in the ends as I was going along. Changing colors so frequently results in a lot of tails. Rather than wait until I was finished, I wove them in after finishing every couple stripes. I finally have the knack for weaving in ends that I'm no longer as wary when getting to that point in a project. I'm also a lot faster at it.

For the first time in almost a month I worked on the baby blanket. I'd been flying through it. Then the film festivals hit, followed by entering moving preparation mode. It took me a moment to figure out where I needed to start knitting. I nearly joined it in the round, which would have resulted in much anguish if I hadn't caught the obvious mistake in time. After knitting a few rows I decided that the tails were getting in the way, so I sewed them in despite having about a skein and a half to knit until I'm finished.

The plan after work today was to box up my books and, if I was motivated enough, the rest of the stuff in my living room. Before putting the books in boxes, I decided that now was a good time to inventory them through Library Thing. I probably missed a few that were in another room and already packed, although I unpacked some once this became a mission.

This is a handy tool for me and for anyone with a decent number of books. I've added a new feature in the sidebar to allow you to take a peek at what's in my library. My complete list of entries is here. I lost my enthusiasm for doing any more packing after cataloging these books. It was time well spent, though. Does anyone know if something similar exists for CDs and DVDs?

4 Comments:

At 2:20 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The felted needle roll looks great. I've been tempted by the library thing a few times, but with 5 huge bookcases of books, plus piles of books on the floor next to them I'm scared of the work involved in cataloguing them. Is the program arduous to use?

 
At 11:06 AM, Blogger the secret knitter said...

I think it was easy to use, but I can see it being a pain if you have a lot of books to enter. (I found that typing in the ISBN was the fastest way to catalog.)

Also keep in mind that you can enter "only" 200 books for free. Unlimited entries cost $10 a year or $25 for life. Obviously the lifetime option is more cost-effective, assuming it's still around in three years.

 
At 3:27 PM, Blogger donnadb said...

I did the lifetime thing, because I got totally hooked on it. :)

I imagine there is a CD/DVD system -- we should look into it, since we desperately need a corresponding organizational index to our wonderfully organized drawers.

 
At 4:43 PM, Blogger Karen said...

Great felted project, Mark! The colors are terrific together.

There's no way I could sit and log all my books into a program. Nor do I think I would want to.

 

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